Report from the Financial Times
In Brief – The European Commission is reported to be undertaking an internal review of all the investigations of major US tech companies begun during the past year, including under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulating the largest digital “gatekeepers” and the Digital Services Act (DSA) regulating how digital platforms deal with objectionable and illegal content. According to sources within the commission, all decisions and potential fines will be paused while the review is underway, but technical work on the cases will continue. The review comes at a time when a new roster of commissioners takes over as President Ursula von der Leyen enters her second term, but also as President Trump begins his second term with what appears to be far closer relationships with many of the largest US digital companies than he had during his first term, as well as his long-time tendency to take an adversarial role with the European Union when he believes that US interests or US companies are being disadvantaged. The official reaction of the Commission to the reports was to deny that any such review was taking place and investigations were all continuing apace, including comments from Commissioner Teresa Ribera of Spain, the new head of competition policy, saying at a public event that there had been “no freezing” and “no reassessments” of the cases being pursued under the Digital Markets Act.
Context – Apple, Meta, and Google were the first three digital giants facing investigations under the DMA while X and Meta are under investigation for not complying with the DSA (as are China-affiliated TikTok and AliExpress), with the relationship with X being particularly fraught. Meta’s announcements aligning with X, Elon Musk and the new Trump Administration on content moderation, including Mark Zuckerberg comments like “the US government has a role in basically defending [the US tech industry] abroad” are clearly aimed to engage the President in a standoff with the EU. And the President has talked repeatedly about the tech leaders asking him to help deal with Europe.